Some notes on the realization of John Cage's "A Dip in the Lake" 2001-2003
Robert Pleshar

In July of 2001, I came across the score for this composition in the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago. I thought it was interesting and made a copy of it for further study. The score is a list of 427 locations divided into 10 groups of 2 (quicksteps), 61 groups of 3 (waltzes) and 56 groups of 4 (marches). The locations are usually written as street intersections or other locations easily discernable on a map (cemeteries, parks, Lake Michigan, etc.). As far as I could tell, with my limited research at the time, this piece hadn't been recorded or performed. I mentioned this score to my friend Rob Anderson, who is also a fan of modern (or contemporary or whatever you want to call it) music and art and ideas. We thought it would be a good idea to record a realization of this piece. At the very least, it was an excuse for us to wander around the area we lived in and explore some places we were not familiar with and re-examine some places we knew quite well.

The composition is very open-ended - it is "for performer(s) or listener(s) or record maker(s)" - which we took to mean that it could be performed by musicians or artists at the specific locations, or that the sounds that were found at the locations themselves could serve as the basis for the composition. It seemed more Cageian (and more interesting) to us to make field recordings and mix them together in the specified combinations. The piece can also be made for other cities or places by assembling through chance operations a list of 427 addresses and then arranging them into the groups listed above, again through chance operations.

So, I purchased a Rand McNally Streetguide mapbook that covered the 6-county region and some Post-it Note arrows, and went about the task of finding the addresses and locations in the map book and marking them. This way, we could group together the locations and record many in a single day of traveling around. During this process, I came across some locations that I could not find on these current maps, such as the City of Chicago Correctional Farm and Hinsdale Airport. Through further research I was able to locate where some of these locations are and what was there now and marked those places as well. There were still 6 or 7 that I could not find.

For each location we determined the length of time of recording using a random number table to determine the number of seconds to record with an arbitrarily-selected maximum of 240 seconds (4 minutes). We decided to take photographs of the locations we were recording as well, for further documentation. Some camera malfunctions and night-time recording forced us into taking photos at a large subset of the locations simultaneous to recording. Sometimes Rob Anderson recorded and I photographed, sometimes vice versa, sometimes I went out by myself and did both. The only other self-imposed rule that I can think of is that once the recorder started, we let it run until the specified time ended and didn't speak during the recordings (unless we were directly spoken to).

The actual recording / photographing process began July 21, 2001 with a trip to O'Hare Airport and continued with excursions around the area until the field recordings were completed on April 1, 2003. Most were accomplished by driving around to areas, but I was fortunate enough to be invited on a boat ride in Lake Michigan, which provided several of the recordings of locations designated as being in the lake. We also used public transportation to get to some of the locations, and our feet, of course. Field recordings were made on a Sony digital mini-disc recorder with a higher-end Sony stereo microphone.

In the meantime we were still trying to track down the 6 or 7 missing locations when a trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art gift shop revealed a postcard of the map with lines drawn on it connecting the coordinates as drawn by John Cage. It turns out that the Museum held in its permanent collection the map that was used to make the score! I emailed the MCA and explained that I was working on a realization of the score and asked if it would be possible to see the map. Ms. Jude Palmese very kindly took Rob and me to their storage facility where we were allowed to view the map. Close examination allowed me to determine the missing locations and pinpoint them in my map book so that we could record there. She also let us look at their file on the piece and it turns out that the piece was premiered in Chicago at New Music America 1982 at Navy Pier. That realization was assembled by Peter Gena and was performed in a ship docked at the pier, with tape loops that were played on twelve reel-to-reel decks that were situated around the ship. In the notes in their file it was mentioned that Peter Gena, after discussing the matter with Mr. Cage, spliced the tapes together in the manner suggested in Cage's piece "Rozart Mix." In this piece, recordings are made on reel-to-reel tapes and cut apart into randomly determined size pieces and then spliced back together in random order without regard as to the direction of the tape so that some pieces are forward, some backward, some sideways, some with the opposite side of the tape passing over the tape heads, etc.

Rob and I had discussed using many different methods to mix the sounds together, as the score does not specify this aspect of the piece. We felt that using a variety of methods with some chance determined aspects was the best way to go about it. In the fall of 2002 Rob Anderson moved to San Francisco, and I continued doing recordings for the project in the usual sporadic manner. We were in no big hurry to finish the project as we had no real final goal other than my compulsive yet slow-moving determination to finish it.

In February of 2003, however, I was contacted via email by Ms. Julie Rodrigues Widholm of the MCA. She said that she would be using the map by Mr. Cage in an upcoming exhibition starting in May, and that Jude had told her that I was working on a realization of the sound / musical aspect of the piece. I replied that I thought I could have it all completed by May if she was interested in using it. I assembled some mixes of tracks for which I had all of the components recorded, and made a sample CD for her. We met a short time later and I played her the tracks. She wanted to use them as well as some of the photographs we took in the exhibition. So, in a whirlwind of recording and mixing during the months of February through April of 2003, I recorded at the remaining locations and mixed the source recordings together using ProTools and my old reel-to-reel deck. Some tracks are heavily edited tape loops, some are simply the sounds all mixed together and playing at once, many have sounds from different sources cutting in and out at chance-determined intervals, many have some forward and some backward components, some are mixed "Rozart mix"-style, and so on.

Many different things can be heard on these recordings: birds, insects, conversations, songs playing from car radios, car alarms, horns, lots of traffic sounds, machinery, water, trains, wind, leaves, rain, snow, walking, etc. Doing all of the recordings for this project really opened up my ears and eyes to a great amount of sounds and sights. The subtle differences between cars on wet and dry pavement, cicadas crescendoing and de-cresendoing, the eerie and beautiful high-pitched wheeze of slow-moving trains in a railroad yard, a sole leaf skittering across the ground, and water flowing through cracks were examples of sounds that I had heard my entire life, but never really listened to until now. One of the things I found that was most astounding was that when a tiny snowflake lands on a microphone it is incredibly loud. Another was that the quietest recording happened while standing in a doorway near 75th Street fairly late at night. There was just by chance a tremendously quiet stretch of time when I happened to be there, shortly ruptured by the usual traffic sounds. I never expected the quietest segment to occur in the middle of the city.

John Cage once said "Music is everywhere, we just have to look for it." I think everyone should perform this piece (or something similar to it) by simply going to different places and carefully looking and listening to what is going on around them.

My heartfelt thanks to these people whose assistance was crucial to the completion of this project, from technical support to listening to ideas and giving feedback to giving me a kick in the pants to actually finish it: